The definition of “internet” and of “internetworking” is accepted as defined in the book by Douglas E. Corner named “Internetworking with TCP/IP (Transmission Control/Internet Protocol)”, volume I, third edition, 1995, ISBN-0-13-216987-8 the entire disclosure of which is incorporated herewith by reference. “In the past 15 years, a new technology has evolved that makes it possible to interconnect many disparate physical networks and make them function as a coordinated unit. The technology called internetworking accommodates multiple, diverse underlying hardware technologies by providing a way to interconnect heterogeneous networks and a set of communication conventions. The internet technology hides the details of network hardware and permits computers to communicate independent of their physical network connections.” (p.1).
Corner views an Internet from the point of view of the user, wanting to “view an internet as a single, virtual network to which all machines are attached despite their physical connections.” (p.55). Furthermore, Corner maintains that TCP/IP makes all networks equal. “The TCP/IP internet protocol treats all networks equally. A local area network like an Ethernet, a wide area network like the ANSET backbone, or a point-to-point link between two machines each count as one network.”
Such a computer network is illustrated schematically in FIG. 1, showing a plurality of users 1, all of them connected to an Internet 2. FIG. 1 is drawn along the lines of FIG. 3.3 by Corner but simplified. A plurality of servers 3 is also coupled to the Internet 2. Servers 3, also called internet-servers, server computers or server platforms, may operate on the same Internet, but as many vendors produce numerous makes and models, the servers usually operate under the control of different Operating Systems. The links L1 and L2 connect, respectively, between the users 1 and the Internet 2 as well as between the Internet 2 and the servers 3.
Evidently, the Internet depicted in FIG. 1 includes private Internets, or corporate Internets, as well as the public Internet. Requests emitted by the users 1 of the Internet 2 to the servers 3 may include, among others, Internet-compatible universal resource locators (URLs) identifying sources of the desired information.
FIG. 1 also represents the Internet, which consists of a group of users 1, or clients 1, and servers 2, linked together in a computer network. The structure of the Internet is configured as an aggregation of networks connected by gateways. For our purpose, the Internet is considered to represent a Local Area Network (LAN) with accesses to other LANs via Gateways.
FIG. 2 features a Shared Storage 5, coupled by links L3 to the servers 3. The same numerals are used in the various drawings to indicate similar elements. The links L3 may be either identical or different from the links L1 and L2. Using Shared Storage lowers storage costs and makes resource management easier.
Since the return to server-based computing, information is stored on servers, which are accessed via standard browsers. However, as traffic on the Internet is doubling every 100 days, the network and the server resources constantly require additional capability to keep up with the ever-increasing customer demands. Remedies to the increasing response time, due to the higher load imposed on the servers, include: replacement of servers with computers that are more powerful and addition of servers. Also implemented are: balancing locally or remotely balancing of the workload among duplicated servers (by Load Balancing or Internet Traffic Management, ITM), use of Cache Technology (Proxy Servers, Server Caches or Cache Appliances) and introduction of added storage.
For example, to avoid a long wait, U.S. Pat. No. 6,128,701 disclosed by Malcolm et al., proposes a system for automatically and optimally refreshing documents in a cache, for all documents to be ready and permit a fast response to a potential request by a user. Malcolm proposes a statistical method to implement his invention. It is assumed that the necessary computing resources are available for constantly refreshing all documents, disregarding the heavy investment required for the necessary computer hardware. One must consider that the solution devised by Malcolm appends an additional computer dedicated to the handle caching and further assumed that a request for a document from the server is performed at low frequency.
As another example of the quest for increased speed, U.S. Pat. No. 6,091,725, to Cheriton et al., teaches a method for Internet traffic management, traffic prioritization, access control, and packet forwarding in a computer network. There are specified processing steps for each flow including traffic management, flow control, packet forwarding, access control, and other network management functions. However, the method of Cheriton at al. requires a duplication of servers, their applications and their Internet sites. This solution is expensive and calls for the duplication of hardware, software and system administration effort.
It is thus obvious that there is a need to accelerate the speed of responses to user requests and in particular, to accelerate retrieval of information stored on servers, thus of responses saved in storage.